Comatic

adjectiveStandard termLighting

Relating to or exhibiting the optical aberration known as coma.

Comatic describes a lens or optical system that suffers from coma, causing off-axis point sources to blur into teardrop shapes. Optical engineers correct comatic distortion by combining multiple lens elements with different refractive indices or by utilizing aspheric surfaces to bring the divergent rays back into alignment.

Heard on the job

We had to reject that batch of reflectors because the comatic spread ruined the beam cutoff at the edges.